


Old Russian Blues

by UlsPi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Homophobia, Jewish Aziraphale (Good Omens), Jewish Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Russia, Trans Aziraphale (Good Omens), Trans Crowley (Good Omens), Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27104308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UlsPi/pseuds/UlsPi
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale meet in highschool. Both are trans and gay, and they deal with it in different ways.Takes place in Russia and Israel.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 36





	Old Russian Blues

**Author's Note:**

> This here is based on my own experience. I don't accept concrit, I don't accept any hate. This is me at my rawest, please, respect that. I'll delete all antisemtic comments. I'll delete all anti-Israel comments. Again, this is me at my rawest. All of me is here.

They are lying in Aziraphale's parents' bed. Crowley is kissing him. There's a cross clear in the window - it's Zamoskvorecheye after all, anywhere you sneeze, you sneeze on a church. 

"If the Lord is love, we can't be wrong," Crowley whispers. He's the son of a Jew who hates Jews. He's the son of a quietly religious Orthodox mother. Russian Orthodox, of course. He was baptised, and his Jeiwsh family agreed to it just as quietly. 

And he doesn't fit anywhere, because he's the son of a Jewish father and a Russian mother. It appears that he and Aziraphale grew up listening to the same songs and watching the same cartoons. That's what Crowley thinks. 

"We're sinners, my dear," Aziraphale whispers into Crowley's shoulder. "Nothing can change that. However hard you want to argue it."

There's the Israeli embassy right next to that fucking church. Crowley has every right to walk in there and claim an Israeli citizenship, because his ancestors had fought for the Soviets, because his great grandfather was arrested, because he has that same inquisitive mind. Aziraphale knows that Crowley is too curious, too questioning for what is going on around them. 

"To me, it will always be a sin, my dear. You have to understand."

Crowley clenches his teeth. 

Because the truth is, Crowley isn't afraid, because Crowley is, frankly, far too naive. Because Crowley had that apparently awesome family who accepted him, up until the moment it turned out that their little girl was a lesbian (because on paper Aziraphale was a girl too) and was a non-binary person who preferred traditionally masculine pronouns.

Crowley managed to survive so far because when it's unbearable at home, he has Aziraphale. It's just that it's always unbearable at home, his stepfather is masculine and quietly abusive, his mother is never satisfied with him, and he wants to be accepted, wants to belong.

He doesn't even belong to Aziraphale, since Aziraphale makes the best of his mother's busy career and tells nothing. His mother's boyfriend is a wanker, and Crowley is scared for Aziraphale most of the time, while Aziraphale is scared of Crowley's worry. 

Crowley is still working hard on his English degree, he would still do his best to get a career in publishing, even if his aunts and uncles persist in claiming that the Russian publishing industry was all about spies and shit. For Crowley it only means he wants it more. 

Had he been a spy, had he been an employee of the FSB, he would have been able to do whatever he wanted, because the unspoken rule was that the loyal hounds of the state got everything they wanted. Which is to say, Crowley sees them for what they are, all doublespeak and clever conformity, and Aziraphale sees them for what they aspire to be. 

***

Crowley closes the door quietly. It's early morning, everything is wet with the night dew, and in a few minutes he'll have to go to work. 

He has a cup of tea in his hand and a cigarette in his lips. The matches got wet during the night, so it takes him some time to light the cigarette. He counts his blessings: he did make it into the Israeli embassy one day, his heritage and inheritance close to his chest, all those old papers and documents; he did leave his life behind, all of it, including Aziraphale. This is where the blessings end, but he makes a note to think of those later.

He came to Israel. 

Now, ten years later, he is sitting on his balcony, alone. He's been alone for eleven years.

His blessings over, he thinks of his defeats.

***

Gabriel, Aziraphale's stepfather, liked to make comments about Aziraphale's breasts and physique. Aziraphale listened, to Crowley's horror. That man was using Aziraphale's birth name and assigned gender, cared about nothing but his own smugness, and Aziraphale was listening to him. 

Aziraphale became a member of a fitness club, Aziraphale went out with boys, Aziraphale put on make-up, skirts and dresses. 

And Crowley's parents passed the point where he could have taken it as tough love. It wasn't love, because Crowley decided so. He had always had an indulgent parent in his grandmother, so he went through every old and dusty folder and envelope. There it was, his salvation. Perhaps he hadn't earned it, but he did deserve it, of that he was sure. 

Aziraphale's grandfather was a Jew, so one day Crowley said, come on, Aziraphale, let's run away together. 

Aziraphale looked at him in horror.

"We can be what we are!" Crowley said. 

Aziraphale told him he had never actually thought well of him, had thought Crowley's writing was superficial, told him he asked too many questions and didn't go to church. 

"That's not you," Crowley said. 

"That's me," Aziraphale retorted. "And if you can't accept it, then… We have nothing whatsoever in common," and he used Crowley's birth name and gender. Crowley wailed and ran away. 

***

When they met, Aziraphale was reading Nabokov and Crowley made a stupid remark about it. They became quick friends. They understood each other, and Crowley ached each time Aziraphale went home. 

He knew he was in love pretty quickly, and since Aziraphale kissed and touched him so tenderly, he decided Aziraphale had felt the same. 

It took Aziraphale a few months to accept Crowley and, more importantly, himself. 

Still, it was a sin. Some distant god decided it all for them, and for a while Crowley accepted it. 

***

It's been eleven years. Those soft white curls, those pale blue eyes, that delighted smile - all of it still haunted Crowley. 

He is his own man now. He served in the IDF, he transitioned.

He doesn't look for Aziraphale on Facebook. 

He was in the active service, and he went to study early childhood education afterwards. He has a class of twenty toddlers. Their parents don't know what he was born as, they don't know anything but the man Crowley made himself into.

He smokes and drinks and no one cares. He refused to visit his mother when she was dying and he never talked to his father or stepfather again. He abandoned his grandmother too.

He officially converted. His rabbi was a fierce, strict woman who had given Crowley her own Torah. He's A. Joseph Crowley. A is never to be asked about. It's an A, really, just an A. He's Joseph, he's pretty like Joseph, smart like Joseph, making his own way like Joseph. He's what he will be. He's what he is.

He's listening to Rodion Shchedrin, the music he wrote for his incredible abrasive wife. Was she like Crowley? It sounds preposterous, but was Maya Plisetskaya anything like Crowley? Was she too a genderqueer? After all, she was a goddess, and Crowley doesn't believe in those. She can be his icon, can't she? She's dead anyway. It sounds so bitter, and all of Crowley is so bitter sometimes. 

In a better world he and Aziraphale came out together, had a wedding of their dreams, which for Crowley means no wedding at all. No, after his conversion he wants a real Jewish wedding. 

_Your stories suck, all of you are sick, I will not risk my life for you, I will not risk my comfort for you._

Aziraphale had every right to do so, he did. Crowley was eighteen, though, he couldn't know. He didn't know which words would describe him. Did Plisetskaya suffer through it too? Even with a clever, talented composer at her side…

***

Halfway through his year of careful planning, Crowley called Aziraphale. He had erased his number, but he had memorised it. They met and talked and ended up in that same bed, with a shadow of a cross falling on them. Aziraphale had Crowley in his lap and played Crowley like a cello.

"It's been nine months," Crowley said.

"Really? I think it was indeed."

"Run away with me. Please. I'll do anything. Run away with me."

"My life is here."

They had a few months of _that_ , of something guilty and shameful. Crowley broke down in front of his mother, who went hysterical.

Moscow had her smells, for every time of the year, and that night Crowley smelled March, invincible and stubborn. 

He could go and live his own life. He could stay and live someone else's life, knowing that Aziraphale would force himself into all sorts of torture just to belong where he thought he did. 

They had come up with their names and identities walking around Moscow. Aziraphale lived in Zamoskvorecheye. Lived in the slow heart of it all. Crowley walked him home enough times.

When he was standing in the queue outside the Israeli embassy, the building didn't allow him to see the one where Aziraphale was. 

Crowley had told his parents he had an early class. He wasn't eighteen for nothing, he was going to lose it. There were but a few things he cherished, other than the smells of Moscow, the way he could navigate the underground blindly, while looking into his book or iPod. 

He couldn't trust his so-called family, so he put his trust into his people. He might have faked his mother's death while collecting the missing documents, but he didn't feel guilty about it until his stepfather called him… His stepfather who had once blamed Crowley for his mother's illness. 

Crowley hated them all. 

He told them nothing, booked a night flight, took one book of Goethe's conversations with Eckermann, four notebooks of his poetry and a tartan flask Aziraphale had gifted him when they entered the university. 

He left a letter. He told his parents, his _family_ that he couldn't live like someone else anymore, that he was eighteen, that his mother had told him to come out as _whatever he was_ , and he was doing so. He told them he hoped they'd never find him again.

Crowley wasn't celibate, no, never. He bedded those who wanted him, because for once someone wanted _him_. 

Those stupid blue eyes. 

***

He put his cigarette down. He didn't pay attention so he ended up burning his middle finger badly. The irony. 

Down the wet stairs, down the street, down the road, through the woods, past an old cemetery. They are waiting for him, those twenty toddlers. 

Actually, he has to wait for them, so he makes haste.

His pocket vibrates, and he ignores it, but it never stops fucking buzzing. 

So he answers.

"Yes? It's 6:30, whoever you are, what do you want from me?" There's an old cemetery, there's an old bench, there are so many acorns down his path, and each one contains an oak in all its glory.

"Hello? It's… it's rabbi Ezra Fell. Oh dear…" 

Crowley's heart stops and refuses to work.

"You knew me as Aziraphale. Hello, darling. Could we… where are you, love? Can we talk?"

Crowley stops. It's just outside the old cemetery, he can hear his people whispering to him to be careful, but he has never listened to anyone but himself.

He calls his boss and demands a day off. He says he's sick, he says he's depressed, he pushes all the buttons. 

His boss hums into the phone. "It's ok, Yossi, you… you go get him."

Crowley runs back home, gets into his car. It's an old but trustworthy vehicle, and it's a long drive to Jerusalem, but he makes it in record time, which makes sitting nonchalantly in a cafe a bit difficult, but Crowley does it. 

No.

He makes it. 

He's made every bit of himself and he makes sure he's nonchalant. He had a day off anyway.

Aziraphale, no, rabbi Ezra Fell enters the cafe, and he's just as he used to be - white curls and blue eyes.

***

It's never been easy for them, but they make it. Even if it's a long drive. Aziraphale moves in with him, into his tiny, cozy apartment. They do shopping together. Their bodies match who they are now. Aziraphale refuses to talk about it, so Crowley doesn't ask.

They fly to Cyprus one Sunday (Sunday is Crowley's usual day off) and get married there. 

Aziraphale suddenly is not afraid of being disowned or judged. 

Crowley doesn't ask questions, because now, when he wakes up, Aziraphale is there, and has a cup of milky tea in his hands. He begs Crowley to stop smoking, so Crowley does.

All of it is just like one of Crowley's dreams so he doesn't argue and doesn't protest.

Aziraphale takes Crowley's car every day to drive to Jerusalem, and every evening he comes back to Crowley's flat. They cook together. They eat together. They sleep together. 

Crowley doesn't ask any questions. He accepts Aziraphale and his body because he knows which body Aziraphale wanted, so… So he kisses and sucks and suckles and makes love to that body. Aziraphale tells him that he's exactly what he is. He is what he will be.

Eventually Crowley learns it all. That Aziraphale followed Crowley, served in the IDF, transitioned and studied. He was the best of the best, which doesn't surprise Crowley, Aziraphale has always been a teacher's pet. 

He studied and searched for Crowley until he found him.

That's how they are to be henceforth. 

Crowley doesn't argue. 

He takes his tea, he goes to work, he works, he comes back. Aziraphale makes little money, so it's up to Crowley to provide for them, and it's surprisingly enough. 

His, - no, their - landlord hangs a Pride flag one day. Turns out he likes his tenants and how silly they are around each other. Crowley likes his soda clean, Aziraphale likes it sweet. Crowley washes his car weekly, Aziraphale likes it when it's dirty. They argue about it.

Crowley asks about Gabriel. Aziraphale shrugs. Crowley doesn't push for more answers.

Aziraphale asks about something, anything, and Crowley tells him everything. That's what he is after all, he's here to answer questions. 

They renew their vows every year. The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland. Each year Aziraphale agrees to marry Crowley. Again.

And again.

And again.

Sometimes Aziraphale goes back to Russia… Sometimes Crowley can't breathe.

It's been years and years and years. Years upon years. 

"What… what made you change your mind, angel?"

"Don't call me that. I couldn't… I couldn't stay somewhere that you left. Hoped I'd find you. I did. Now…" A sigh, a cry, a hitched breath. "I…"

Crowley shushes him.

They will talk, they will. Just not today.

He walks out with a cup of tea and counts his blessings.

**Author's Note:**

> The music   
>  https://youtu.be/CoxDZqYfoxE 


End file.
